News Round-Up

• “Time for the lockdown nostalgics to confront the true horror of what Britain lived through” – There can be no hiding anymore from the decisions that were made – and their terrible impact on millions of people, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Scale of pandemic hit to U.K. workforce laid bare: Inactivity has risen nearly twice as fast as expected since 2019 with mental health issues, ‘long Covid’ and back problems blamed – amid warnings another 317,000 people will be out of action by 2026” – Just 59% of the half-a-million strong increase in those classed as economically inactive can be explained by demographic changes, reports the Mail.
• “The madness of the lockdown trials” – As Matt Hancock’s Lockdown Files gain public attention, there are still plenty of Covid trials before the courts, writes Gus Carter in the Spectator.
• “As police pursued my father during Covid lockdown, my lonely mother endured care home prison” – Rachel Johnson, Boris Johnson’s sister, writes in the Telegraph that, “From the moment the first ‘stay home’ order was issued, I had profound misgivings about lockdown – everything about it.”
• “Fresh texts reveal Matt Hancock discussed how Covid could ‘propel’ his career days before virus hit U.K. and boasted of looking ‘great’ in pictures – as ex-Health Secretary breaks cover for first time since bombshell WhatsApp leak” – The latest messages show Mr. Hancock was considering how the pandemic could help his career as early as January 2020, the Mail reports.
• “The sinister cruelty of lockdown has been laid bare” – We now know just how drunk on tyranny the political class was during the pandemic, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “The truth behind China’s zero-Covid exit: President Xi’s No.2 ignored his call to keep lockdowns because officials were terrified by unprecedented protests and health chiefs lied about resulting spike in cases amid chaos behind the scenes” – Li Qiang, the man recently elevated to No.2 on China’s ruling Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, abruptly drove a decision to activate the reopening plans sooner than intended, according to the Mail.
• “The ‘fact checkers’ can’t find the target never mind hit it” – Norman Fenton is not impressed with the latest effort to ‘fact-check’ his work.
• “State Power & Covid Crimes” – Jeremy Prest on Return to Reason welcomes Ramesh Thakur to discuss his five-part paper entitled ‘State Power & Covid Crimes’.
• “Persecution by FAQ” – Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson recall Neil O’Brien MPs malicious Government-backed attack on them during the pandemic.
• “Italy closes investigation alleging Covid lockdown failures” – Italian prosecutors have closed a COVID-19 investigation that accuses officials, including a former premier and a regional governor, of wrongdoing for failing to extend a lockdown zone in the early days of the pandemic to the northern city of Bergamo and adjacent industrial valleys, reports AP News.
• “Germany and Italy block Brussels from banning petrol and diesel cars” – Telegraph report that Germany and Italy have thrown a planned European Union ban on new petrol and diesel cars into disarray as they seek exemptions to protect their powerful car industries.
• “‘So your working-class builder who’s worried about spending £60-a-week on ULEZ is now an extremist?’: Fury as ‘disgraceful’ Sadiq Khan is slammed for ‘smearing’ critics of his war on London’s motorists as ‘far Right’ and ‘Covid deniers’” – Tensions have long been running high over the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone – where £12.50 is charged for driving polluting vehicles – due to cover all London boroughs from August, reports the Mail.
• “Gas Power Is Cheaper Than Wind, Despite Carbon Brief’s Claims” – If we had more gas-fired power and less wind power, our energy bills would be lower, not higher, writes Paul Homewood in WUWT.
• “The green movement faces a painful confrontation with reality” – The realisation is now dawning that, like everything else, renewables need cheap fossil fuels, says Rupert Darwall in the Spectator.
• “Teenage climate activist ‘unfairly ridiculed’ by radio interviewer” – A broadcaster is reprimanded by a watchdog for questioning the travel methods of Izzy Cook, New Zealand’s answer to Greta Thunberg, the Telegraph reports.
• “Backdoor Sharia Law” – We no longer have blasphemy laws in the U.K., but you wouldn’t know it where Islam is concerned, writes Frank Haviland in the New Conservative.
• “We must stand up for the Wakefield Quran scuffers like our lives depend on it – because they do” – The unfortunate schoolboys are the latest victims of a particularly judgmental and unforgiving strand of honour-based Islam that’s already wiped out much of what was left of pluralism in its home of Pakistan, writes Phil Craig in CapX. 
• “Stop trying to indoctrinate kids” – Axe-grinding political obsessives could kill off reading, says Kathleen Stock in UnHerd.
• “Ukraine’s brain drain is 17 times worse than Russia’s” – The country’s high-skilled workers are leaving en masse, says Noah Carl in UnHerd.
• “The martyring of Scott Adams” – Cancelling the cartoonist hasn’t helped race relations, writes Kat Rosenfeld in UnHerd.
• “The parents who fear their 11-year-olds will be scarred for life by the graphic sex education lessons that no one warned them about… and the drag queen who told pupils there are 73 genders wasn’t the worst of it” – Relationship and Sex Education lessons at the Queen Elizabeth II school have been put on hold while there is an inquiry into “graphic and indecent” classes unsuitable for young children, reports the Mail.
• “Complete rubbish, spoken with complete certainty. Keir Starmer criticising so-called ‘Freedom Day’ summer ‘21. There was never any ‘surge’. Government’s lockdowns and lies were appalling” – But the ‘Opposition’ did no opposing at all except wanting more, tweets the Together Declaration.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.